Urban Pathfindera - Or How I Came To Stop Worrying And Love Converting Systems

An ambitious project I started quite some time ago was the Pathfinderization of the d20 Modern system. Unlike wanting to create an entirely new system (which I thought was wholly unnecessary), my goal was to simply provide an extensive errata for the entire system, and adding a couple other neat little touches I thought were worth adding in.

For reasons of wanting to avoid being slapped by copyright lawyers, I decided that I would only provide the text that needed to be updated - everything else was as the books had stated. I went through, I overhauled *everything*. Made every character class Pathfinder-compatible, balanced unbalanced classes, removed Action Points and instead made abilities a X Times Per Day/Encounter ability, so on and so forth. I went through and did an extensive re-writing of the armor and firearms systems - armor provides DR in addition to extra AC - at the expense of Dexterity bonuses, of course - and made guns more potent by giving them base modifiers to accuracy and damage based on the type of gun being used - and in doing so prepping them to be freely modified much like one could modify regular weapons via magic or (additional) mastercrafting.

d20 Modern, Future, Future Tech, Cyberscape, and even Apocalypse were looked at, reconsidered, and overhauled. I went page by page through the Weapons Locker, assigning new attributes to each and every single gun in there, without repasting the entire book on the internet - all you'll find are the changes made to each weapon. Yet there was one sole book that escaped my purview (aside from Past... who needs to change anything in that when you have Pathfinder now?).

That book was Urban Arcana.

I loved the idea behind Urban Arcana. It was a great idea. What wasn't great, however, was that the design philosophy behind the entire thing was critically flawed from my own idea of how this system should work - essentially, in order to cast a Magic Missile, one needed to take three levels of a basic class, and then gain levels in one of the extremely-limited magic-based classes.

So basically, 4th level character, but only a 1st level caster. Magic Missile? My basic handgun deals more damage at first level, don't make me laugh! At the upper echelon, the maximum level spell castable by modern characters is a 5th level spell. While dangerous to a party with limited magical abilities, this stark contrast is insane when compared to any fantasy-based caster, who has access to far greater abilities by that time. By 13th level, a Wizard or Sorceror is slinging around 7th level spells. Even with guns, how the hell is a modern character ever going to possibly compete should these two worlds combine?

That there's the rub, and tonight, I think I'll take the first steps to answering that question. Bear with me, this might take a little while.

The difference between Mages and Hedge Wizards

Or something to that effect, I suppose. Mages are what we typically associate normal spellcasters with - they are pretty awesome dudes who didn't afraid of anything and shoot fireballs out of their nostrils all night long while banging their totally hot summoned succubi. Hedge Wizards, or what is the equivalent of the Urban Arcana spellcasters, are modern characters who somehow gain access to spells.

In the context of the game system it was designed for, this makes perfect sense - after all, the CR of most creatures skyrockets because the party is not intended to have any magical abilities whatsoever. This makes your typical monster far more dangerous, since overcoming most common defenses (DR X/Magic or Cold Iron, or even Good, for example) becomes an insurmountable task. Weapons are capped at dealing at best 2d8 (or 2d12 if you're particularly saucy and using some badass AMR), and you have very limited protections against most common damage types, such as fire, cold, and electricity. It's a much higher stakes game, where attempting to defeat something that powerful is pretty much impossible without magic.

At 20th level, the best you can hope to ever use are 5th level spells. Since damaging abilities from other classes are capped due to a lack of magical weapons to help compensate, the Urban Arcana casters are restricted access to higher-level spells, as it would make things far too unbalanced in their favor. On the other hand, though, they pale in comparison to the 'real' casters - which the 'fluff' of the setting explains has long-since been lost to the ages for whatever reason you might want to imagine.

With that having been said, here's the main big point: The only 'advantage' that a Modern caster has over a Fantasy caster is that the Modern one is allowed the use of firearms, and has a different set of skills. Additionally, these characters are granted Talents which better round out their initial abilities by granting them something special early on.

Put a Strong or Tough hero beside a Fighter, and you'll note they are fairly balanced. But put an Urban Arcana caster beside a Wizard or Sorceror, however, and you've got what can only be described as a nightmare - the Wizard or Sorceror will likely win every time, considering they have access to far more powerful spells.

Now, I'm not opposed to this being the case. What I am opposed to, however, is the manner in which this was all presented. In order to start learning anything besides a 0th level spell as a Modern character, you must first take three levels of whatever. This rubs me the wrong way, and while I can understand *why* they did it in the context of the system (which works off of six core classes that eventually specialize elsewhere), the problem lies in that very same design - every class has to move into an "Advanced" class. It is literally impossible to play a first-level character who has access to something more powerful than Ray of Frost - and that's kind of lame, in a way. So how do we solve this issue without unbalancing the scales yet again?

Solving the riddle

I like to think the best solution lies in one of two places. One, you play a character utilizing one of the Fantasy classes - not an ideal solution, of course, but it should still be acceptable in certain circles that even the oldest of old school mages could be technophobes (and unlike other modern characters, not allowed the benefits of Occupations and the like). The second option lies right in the core of the system itself - a feat available only at character creation, which allows the player the ability to cast 0th level spells.

See, I liked the idea of that, because it was a way to cast spells as a Modern character. The problem, however, is that it never scaled in any way at all - what if you decided that you didn't want to advance into the casting advanced classes? Worse yet, what if you realized that you couldn't meet the prereqs required to move into those classes? Wild magic should be allowed to bear fruit at some point, shouldn't it?

4E has taught me many things, and one thing I enjoy about it is their take on multi-classing. Particularly, the ability to take something from another class as you desire. The problem I see between the Modern casters and the Fantasy ones is that the Modern characters don't get enough of a leg up on the Fantasy boys - they're always going to be left in the dust, being nothing more than pathetic posers wishing that they could be cool enough to cast the real magics.

What if we just let them? The solution I came up with some time ago was that you could make a feat available only at character creation that turns any of the core Modern classes into a spellcasting one - by using what I called a Universal Talent, you gained access to a *very* limited spell progression chart, and chose a source of magic - Arcane or Divine. Sounds familiar, right?

Additionally, the character could choose a source of study as well - Natural or Practiced. Natural casters gained spells like Sorcerors or Favored Souls would. Practiced were your Wizards and Clerics. The kicker? These characters could never see spells above second level without proper training. Perfect for someone who plans on eventually advancing into the Advanced classes... and for someone who just wants a bit of flavor? Equally useful as well, without breaking things too much.

The problem with solutions

Of course, this brings about some issues of its own. If left unchecked, eventually the Modern casters would overshadow the Fantasy ones. And for that very reason, they are capped on the maximum spell they are allowed to cast. The Advanced Class grants them access to fifth level spells, and a Prestige Class would allow them access to 7th. But this comes with its own problem as well, which brings me to the point of this entire thing:

In order to create such a solution, one must tear out everything that exists with the currently-existing magic classes in Urban Arcana, in order to make them work well with Pathfinder. Not only do you have to change how their spell progression works, you also have to strip the currently-existing level-based abilities, and make them something more than just "bonus feat, divine spells" every single level.

As it stands right now, a 5th level wizard can cast a 5d6 fireball. A 5th level Modern hero can cast a 2d6 Shocking Grasp. I'm okay with not allowing them access to the higher level spells... but can't we at least let them treat their core class as part of their effective caster level? 5d6 Shocking grasp is good, but pales in comparison to the Fireball (as it can only affect a single target).

The other thing I would love to see with making Urban Arcana Pathfinder ready is the addition of brand new abilities. The book had great ideas with some of their spells, such as powering electronic devices or making vehicles move, or even casting magic through the internet. What if the Modern caster, unlike the Wizards of yore, could swap out their spells on the go? Pull out your PDA, and suddenly you've got the incantations for a spell you didn't prepare for the day - something a Wizard might find difficult, being that they still work on the old Vancian system.

I believe that selectable Talents is the way to go here - and allowing for additional caster-based benefits to allow the Modern caster to become far more versatile is one way to allow them to compete with the old masters without tipping the scales too far in one direction or the other.

Urban Arcana had great ideas. It's just a shame they were executed so terribly.

With all of this said and done, I've spent over an hour typing this thing. It's almost a freaking essay at this point. Maybe later this week, I'll start setting aside time to begin working once again on the framework of this project - unlike the previous stages, I only had to update things. With this, I will be creating brand new content, because quite frankly I never really did like what they did with casting magic in Modern. Universal Talents, probably updating the original Advanced Classes, and then adding in 5-level Prestige classes will be a great step in the right direction, I think.

It'll be a heck of a project... but I *did* do a complete firearms overhaul, so I think this will be about as ambitious as Pathfinderizing Modern in the first place.